Startup India

UrbanClap claimed its operating losses "largely flat" at Rs 72 crore for FY19 from Rs 57 crore in FY18. UrbanClap competes with Amazon-backed Housejoy in the home services market.

UrbanClap expanded into new verticals last year including cleaning, pest control, and painting.

Home services startup UrbanClap has announced a 150 per cent increase in its operating revenues for FY19 to Rs 116 crore from Rs 46 crore in FY18. Releasing its unaudited FY19 financial results, UrbanClap claimed “largely flat” operating losses at Rs 72 crore from Rs 57 crore in FY18.

Currently, around 20,000 service professionals are on-board UrbanClap across various categories even as the company is looking to enhance that number to over 1 million professionals in the next five years, said Abhiraj Singh Bhal, co-founder UrbanClap. The startup currently delivers services to 10 cities in India.

UrbanClap, founded in 2014, said that its number of service orders also went up from around 1.2 million in FY18 to around 3.3 million in the last fiscal year, recording a 3X jump.

“FY16 total order count was around 100,000 that grew to around 3.5 lakh in FY17 followed by 11 lakh in FY18 and 33 lakh (3.3 million) in FY19. So the growth in the number of service orders is the core of our business that is growing 3X year-over-year,” UrbanClap co-founder Abhiraj Bhal told Financial Express Online.

The gross transaction value (GTV) of FY19 service orders was around Rs 400 crore up from Rs 130 crore for orders in FY18 while the company’s average order value is around Rs 1,200, said Bhal. GTV is equivalent to e-commerce’s gross merchandise value metric for growth.

UrbanClap expanded into new verticals last year including cleaning, pest control, and painting and also forayed in Dubai and few tier-II cities in India.

The startup’s future growth drivers would include expansion of existing categories of which beauty services, skin care, grooming, appliance services and basic home repairs are leading ones. Another area of expansion would expansion to tier-II cities and launching in Abu Dhabi this year along with one more international market, said Bhal.

UrbanClap has raised $110.7 million across seven rounds of funding so far and counts Steadview Capital, Vy Capital, Saif Partners, Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, etc., apart from Ratan Tata as its investors. It last raised $50 million from Steadview Capital in November last year, as per deals tracker Crunchbase.

In terms of the acquisition, Bhal said the company is not actively envisaging buyouts in home services space neither it is looking to raise new funding round. “Till date, we haven’t touched the series C round of $21 million that happening in 2017.”

The startup competes with Bengaluru-based and Amazon-backed Housejoy that claims over 100 services being offered and having over 65,000 professionals on its platform, as per the company’s website.